The U.S. Open: An Olympic Sized Challenge

The U.S. Open: An Olympic Sized Challenge.

Golf? This about covers it…

I was handed this great poem by a JC Golf employee, and it was well worth sharing. I mean he rhymed “hazards” and “matters”, fabulous!

Enjoy! Greg

Interlocked Summer Series Part 4 – The Final Touches

Blogger’s Note: This is the final of four posts designed to help you put your optimum golf bag together. Today, we concentrate on reinforcing the “playability” of each of your clubs.

(Oh yeah, we’ll tip you off on how to find the proper “flat stick” as well!)

Interlocked Summer Series Part 3 – Wedges

Blogger’s Note: This is the third of four posts detailing the art of putting your golf bag together, driver down to the putter. 

Now that we have helped determine your driver loft, figured out your longest playable iron, and gotten an idea of the long game clubs you should carry, let’s go to the other end of your set and decide on your wedges.

Interlocked Summer Series Part 2 – Long Game

Blogger’s Note: This is the second of four posts detailing the art of putting your golf bag together, driver down to the putter. 

In last week’s first post we looked at loft considerations when selecting a driver and we also advised you to get a trained eye to help you find the longest “playable” iron that you should carry.

This week we look at bridging the gap between your driver and lowest iron.

Interlocked Summer Series – Assembling Your Bag

As we hit the heart of summer, we wanted to think of a way to reward our growing readership while still taking a summer siesta, and decided to spend the next four weeks posting what has been our most popular series from over the past two years. 

 

To date, the series I did on putting your golf bag together is by far the most consistently accessed archived material each and every week. The reason is simple; people love to talk about, read about, and think about their golf clubs and many lovers of the game tinker with their equipment obsessively.

 

What I wanted people to concentrate on was the how to of putting together your set of golf clubs, and while I hope that the quality of the series is what has made it so popular, I’m quite sure that the main reason so many people end up on these posts can be found in the sheer mass of golf club searches that people do.

 

(Hopefully the insight kept them reading as there’s some good stuff in here!)

 

We’ll be back each of the next (3) Wednesdays, to continue the journey from your driver all the way through your putter. Enjoy!

14 clubs.

One of the first things that most golfers are taught is that this is the number of clubs that they are allowed to carry in their bag.

The question becomes, which 14 clubs?

Enough Is Enough! Win One For The Red White & Blue

I absolutely love the Open Championship.

Let me rephrase that, I absolutely love the British Open.

Good Work If You Can Keep It

Bob Gilder has made 10 million dollars playing golf here in the US over the past 10 years.

Make that over 10 million dollars.

The Good and the Ugly

For anyone that plays Fantasy Golf (or a Fantasy league of any kind) there is a tendency to maybe take this “leisure activity” a bit too serious, a bit too personal even, in the course of following your team throughout the season. In my case, tightly gauging performance more than just week to week, but hole by hole, is the weekly norm as I like to see the ebb and flow of a round and a tournament unfold for my players. I go into this knowing that it is mostly to my detriment.

A good example of this came from the recent Memorial Tournament where former world top-10 Henrik Stenson continued his tough year with a missed cut. Happens all the time, right?

Well yeah, but…

Stenson missed by one shot after shooting a 79-67, the second round included a furious rally on his second nine that fell just short. Had I just checked the scores on Friday evening I likely would have seen that he missed the cut by one shot and shrugged it off, but what actually unfolded was poor play (clearly) followed by great play (the 67 was the 2nd lowest round of the day) that served to tantalize just enough before coming up empty. This wasn’t nearly the most frustrating missed cut of the year -Zach Johnson finished bogey-triple to miss the cut at the Heritage- just the most recent.

It truly is maddening when you follow this stuff closely enough.

In the second half of my fantasy team’s first half analysis I take a look at the guy’s who have put me in a great position as well as those who are ummm, for lack of better analysis, ruining things for me!

12-15 (The guys that are ruining things for me…)

12 – Ian Poulter
After a top-10 to start the year, didn’t play on the PGA Tour for 6 weeks and was unceremoniously bounced in the first round of his title defense at the WGC-Accenture. Hasn’t shot a weekend round in the 60s since early March and I’ll need to see more starts in the second half to know what I’ve got with him.

13 – Jamie Lovemark
The other pride of Rancho Santa Fe has been battling a bulging disk and hasn’t teed it up in ten weeks. A friend of mine who works on Tour told me not to look for him anytime soon which is unfortunate for someone who should be a future star. Another Tour Rep I know told me before the year started to make Jhonattan Vegas the “Nationwide Guy” on my team. This could aptly be described as unfortunate for me.

14 – Henrik Stenson
Missed five of his last six cuts yet I somehow feel like he is on to something. Yes I know this is on the heels of a Memorial-esque 79-68 at the Heritage which was preceded by an opening round 83 at Augusta, I’ve just got a feeling here.

15 – Michael Sim
Good golly. Nine cuts missed in 12 attempts and if I am to believe what I hear from my buddy that gave me the Lovemark update, what I thought would be a breakout year will ultimately be a costly selection for me.

4, 3, 2, 1 (The guys who validate this insanity for me!)

4 – Brian Gay
Plays just about every week, has already racked up seven top-25s, and only two missed cuts!?! Sign me up! I took him because plays all the time, but the rewards have been a great deal more. Just qualified for the US Open which I am hoping is the beginning much more to come from one of my most consistent performers.

3 – Nick Watney
Welcome to superstardom Nick, I’ve believed in you all along!!! Seven top 10’s and a win in a WGC event at the Cadillac have already pushed his 2011 earnings past his 2010 season total showcasing a career on the rise for a player who is now in the short discussion of best young American player. 

2 – Webb Simpson
Absolutely killing it for me this year, and that includes a heartbreaking playoff loss that was largely a result of a self-imposed penalty that Simpson incurred late in the 4th round of the Zurich Classic. That finish was his second 2nd place finish of the year as he has already more than doubled his earnings from last season.

1 – K J Choi
Doesn’t have as many top 10’s as Watney and hasn’t even come close to doubling his earnings to this point like Simpson has, but you can certainly count me as a west coast charter member of Choi’s Bois! He won the Players -which also doubles as the biggest pay day of the year on tour- was in the hunt (again) at Augusta and is looking just now to hit his stride in his 40’s. Going forward he has the feel of a guy who can win any week he tees it up, and you can bet I’ll be cheering him all the way down the stretch in 2011, maybe even in a personalized t-shirt.
Greg

A great player and a man of the people too!!

Top 16.5% …

To me June 1st traditionally marks the time when the PGA Tour schedule really heats up. Looking ahead, seven of the remaining 18 events are either a Major or a FedEx Playoff event, toss in this week’s Memorial and the remaining World Golf Championship Event, the Bridgestone, in August and a full 1/2 of the remaining events will have a powerhouse field.

(Though as I alluded to in an earlier post I am still waiting to see one truly watered down field in 2011. It seems as if all of the world’s top players got together and decided to make certain that every Tour stop gets a solid field. Seriously, I cannot think of one truly “second rate” field all year)

With great fields, great tournaments, and great finishes behind us and what would have to be the best of the season yet to come the time beckons for a mid-season style breakdown of my fantasy team’s performance where I am happy to say that I am ahead of last season’s pace. (I currently sit 32nd out of 193 which puts me well ahead of my subpar rookie performance last year )